Books on Homeschooling from 1970 to 1991

Copyright © 2013 Karl M. Bunday, all rights reserved.

Why So Many Christians Are Going Home to School
Llewellyn B. Davis (Knoxville, TN: Elijah Co., rev. ed. 1991) (ISBN 1-884098-00-2). 157 pages; bibliography. Mother's exploration of the great variety of reasons she has to homeschool, with foreword by Samuel Blumenfeld. RECOMMENDED. KMBowns

Home Schooling: Political, Historical, and Pedagogical Perspectives
Jane Van Galen & Mary Anne Pitman (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1991) (ISBN 0-89391-706-0). (University of Cincinnati Social and Policy Issues in Education Series). vi and 217 pages; appendix on laws, indexes. Scholarly articles from various points of view by many of the leading current researchers on homeschooling, including Patricia Lines, Brian Ray, Jon Wartes, and Perry Zirkel. Favorite quotation, from the editors' introduction: "Home education is neither a new nor an unusual phenomenon. What is new in human history is institutionalized, compulsory schooling, and what is unusual is the inordinate attention and concern being paid to the relatively small number of families who have chosen to conduct their children's education at home."

My Life As a Traveling Homeschooler
Jenifer Goldman (1991) (ISBN O-934623-75-9). Personal account of homeschooling on the road by the niece of Jerry Mintz of the Alternative Education Research Organization. YOUNG AUTHOR. KMBowns

Homeschooling in the News: Covering the Years 1986-Jan. 1991
Patrick Farenga, editor (Cambridge, MA: Holt Associates, 1991) (ISBN: 0-91367708-6). 54 pages; illustrated, bibliographical references. Reprints of articles on homeschooling from various newspapers and magazines. OCLC

The Bible, Homeschooling, and the Law
Karl Reed (n.p.: Christian Home Ministries, 1991). [v] and viii and 162 pages. KMBowns

Child's Work: Taking Children's Choices Seriously
Nancy Wallace (Cambridge, MA: Holt Associates, 1990) (ISBN 0-913677-06-X). xi and 153 pages; illustrations. Thoughts on the work of children by one of the earlier homeschooling authors, who was strongly influenced by a personal relationship with John Holt. KMBseen_

Successful Home Schooling: Essential Issues for Beginners and Veterans
J. Richard Fugate (Tempe, AZ: Aletheia, 1990) (ISBN 0-86717-005-0). [ii] and 84 pages. Controversial, thought-provoking opinion by one of the earlier Christian homeschoolers. KMBowns

Taking Charge Through Home Schooling: Personal and Political Empowerment
M. Larry and Susan D. Kaseman (KoshKonong Press, 1990) (ISBN 0-9628365-0-8). $12.95, 286 pages. Homeschooling as part of an overall plan for personal empowerment, by a leading couple in Wisconsin's homeschooling movement.

Home Schooling and the Law
Michael P. Farris (Paeonian Springs, VA: Home School Legal Defense Association, 1990). v and 211 pages. Analysis and description of state homeschooling laws in the United States, through 1990, by a founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association. KMBowns

Schooling At Home: Parents, Kids, and Learning: Mothering Magazine
edited by Anne Pedersen & Peggy O'Mara (1990) (ISBN 0-945465-52-1). xi and 250 pages; bibliography and resource guide. Collection articles on homeschooling from Mothering magazine, with foreword by Ashley Montagu.

How to Create Your Own Unit Study
Valerie Bendt (Hawthorne, FL: Family Learning Center, 1990) (ISBN 0-880892-42-1). 116 pages.

Writing from Home : A Portfolio Of Homeschooled Student Writing
Susan Richman (Kittanning, PA: Pennsylvania Homeschoolers, 1990). (ISBN: 0-929446-02-X, 0-929446-03-8 [pbk.]). US$16.95; US$8.95, ix and 372 pages. RLIN_DCLC

The Home as Learning Center: The Family as Educator
Carroll & Smith (??: Kendall-Hunt, 1990) (ISBN 0-8403-5677-3). 144 pages.

Letters Home
Britt Barker (Tonasket, WA: Home Education Press[remote link], 1990) (ISBN 0-945097-09-3). 64 pages. YOUNG AUTHOR.

Learning All the Time
John Holt (1989) (ISBN 0-201-55091-1). WRITTEN BY A TEACHER.

Wisdom's Children: Home Education and the Roots of Restored Biblical Culture: Necessity and Possibility, General Principles and Particulars
Blair Adams and Joel Stein (Austin, TX: Truth Forum, 1989). xviii and 602 pages. Hard-to-find book I saw only too briefly via interlibrary loan, which I'd like to take a more detailed look at. KMBseen_HCO_ILL_

No Regrets: How Home Schooling Earned Me a Master's Degree at Age 16
Alexandra Swann (Anthony, NM [El Paso, TX?]: Cygnet Press, 1989) (ISBN 0-9623611-0-0). 141 pages. Personal account by a daughter in a family that has sent several children to master's degree programs as teenagers, all as the family's mother, a high-school graduate, also kept everyone busy in the family business. YOUNG AUTHOR. KMBowns

Home Education Regulations: What Parents Need to Know about Ohio Home Education Regulations
Diana M. Fessler (??: Cassidy & Nells, 1989) (ISBN 0-9625655-3-9). 104 pages.

The Pennsylvania Home Education Handbook: Using Your Education Style in Complying with the Law
Diana Baseman (Tarentum, PA: Tall Oaks Books, 2d, rev. ed. 1989). (ISBN 0-31865896-8). US$14.95, illustrations. BksPrt

Story of a bill: Legalizing Homeschooling in Pennsylvania
Howard Richman (Kittanning, PA: Pennsylvania Homeschoolers, 1989) (ISBN: 0-929446-01-1). US$6.95; 152 pages; foreword by Raymond S. Moore, afterword by Joseph R. Pitts. KMBseen_HCO

Home Schooling: Answering Questions
Kerri Bennett Williamson (Springfield, IL: C.C. Thomas, 1989) (ISBN 0-398-05615-3). xi and 96 pages. Basic homeschooling information in question-and-answer format.

How to Begin Homeschooling: A Parent's Guide
Judy Garvey (Surry, ME: Gentle Wind School, 1989). 41 pages. OCLC

College Admissions: A Guide for Home Schoolers
Judy Gelner (1988). An early guide to what is no longer much of a problem: colleges love to admit homeschoolers, and hundreds of colleges are known to have done so, including selective colleges such as the Ivy League schools, the best polytechniques, and the United States armed service academies. The publisher has personally advised me that this book is now superseded by Cafi Cohen's And What About College?, which is listed in this site's list of how-to books on homeschooling. KMBowns

Homeschooling for Excellence
David & Micki Colfax (New York, Warner Books, 1988) (ISBN 0-446-38986-2). US$12.99, xv and 152 pages; bibliography and resource guide. Parents' account of why they homeschooled their children, with resource guides and brief account of their first son's journey from a mountain home with no electricity to Harvard. RECOMMENDED. WRITTEN BY A TEACHER. KMBowns

Schoolproof
Mary Pride (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1988) (ISBN 0-89107-480-5). 204 pages. Great book for persons new to homeschooling, on learning to love learning together as a family, by veteran homeschooling columnist and learning materials reviewer Mary Pride. RECOMMENDED.

A Survivor's Guide to Home Schooling
Luanne Shackelford and Susan White (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1988) (ISBN 0-89107-503-8). x and 177 pages; bibliography. Practical, humorous--and controversial--treatment of the nitty-gritty issues in homeschooling. KMBowns

The Day I Became an Autodidact: And the Advice, Adventures, and Acrimonies That Befell Me Thereafter
Kendall Hailey (New York: Delacorte, 1988) (ISBN 0-385-29636-0). 278 pages. Teenage self-learner's account, in diary form, of discovering through her own reading the world of knowledge. Favorite quotation: "I just finished reading the first book of Livy's 142-book history of Rome. Only thirty-five books are extant, thank God. I was surprised to learn the ancient Romans were as overwhelmed by Livy's productivity as I am. According to the introduction, his history's very size 'deterred men from reading it all, so that at a very early date abridgements of it were made.'" YOUNG AUTHOR.

The Three R's at Home
Howard and Susan Richman (Kittanning, PA: Pennsylvania Homeschoolers, 1988) (ISBN 0-929446-00-3). iii and 230 pages. Down-to-earth, classic account of a family's remarkable ways of finding learning opportunities in daily life. RECOMMENDED. KMBowns

Home School Burnout
Raymond & Dorothy Moore (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1988) (ISBN 0-943497-35-3). xi and 336 pages. KMBowns

An Introduction to Home Education: How to Begin Your School
Karen Woodfin Middleton & Susan Beatty (nat'l ed. 1988) (CHEA of CA, P.O. Box 28644, Santa Ana, CA 92799-8644). [vi] and 57 and 15 and 9 pages; resource guide.

The Case for Home Schooling: A Constitutional and Academic Perspective on the Home Schooling Movement
Christopher J. Klicka (Washington, DC: Concerned Women for America, 1988) (Concerned Women for America: Constitutional Issues volume 2). 113 pages.

Getting Started with Home Schooling: an Introductory Guide to Home Education
(Tonasket, WA : Home Education Magazine, c1988. 20 p. : ill. ; 28 cm. ISBN: 0-945097-01-8 (pbk.) : $4.50

Should I Teach My Kids at Home? A Workbook for Parents
Kate Kerman (Cambridge MA: Holt Associates, 1987). 49 pages. Questionnaires for parents to fill in, guiding their decision on whether or not to homeschool. KMBowns

The Peanut Butter Family Home School
Bill Butterworth (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, 1987) (ISBN 0-8007-5244-9). 180 pages; recommended reading. Personal account of one family's experience with homeshooling by Bill Butterworth, a columnist for Moody Monthly magazine. KMBseen_HCO

Home Education and Constitutional Liberties
John W. Whitehead and Wendell R. Bird (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 2nd edition, revised, 1986) (ISBN 0-89107-302-7). 147 pages. Pioneering book on legal issues related to homeschooling. KMBseen_MNU

How to Tutor
Samuel L. Blumenfeld (2nd edition, 1986) (ISBN 0-941995-01-1). 298 pages. Practical, step-by-step advice for becoming anyone's tutor. KMBseen_MPI

Teaching Your Children at Home
Virginia Birt Baker (??: ??, 1986). [4] and iv and 54 pages. Self-published photocopied typescript "how to" book by a mother who had more than a decade of homeschooling experience by the mid-1980s, a famous though hard-to-find title that pioneered the market for homeschooling literature. KMBseen_SPP

The Complete Home Educator: A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Home-Teaching
Mario Pagnoni (Burdette, NY: Larson, 1984) (ISBN 0-943914-11-6). $10.00, xv and 224 pages; illustrations. KMBseen_MNUG

Better Than School
Nancy Wallace (1983) (ISBN 0-954914-04-3). Pioneering book on homeschooling by the author of the more recent book Child's Work.

Anything School Can Do You Can Do Better: The Story of a Family Who Learned at Home
Máire Mullarney (Dublin: Arlen House, 1983) (ISBN 0-905223-38-1). 128 pages; illustrated with drawings by family members, bibliography. Personal account of an Irish mother who began at-home early learning with her family in the 1940s. KMBowns

Home-Spun Schools
Raymond and Dorothy Moore (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1982) (ISBN 0-8499-3070-7). $8.95, 181 pages.

School at Home: Teach Your Own Child
Ingeborg U. V. Kendall (Laguna Beach, CA: ICER Press, 1982) (ISBN 0-914704-03-6). 188 pages; resource guide. KMBowns

Teach Your Own
John Holt (New York: Delta/Seymour Lawrence, 1981) (ISBN 0-440-08539-X). 369 pages; resource guide. Classic book on homeschooling by the late John Holt, whose radical ideas on education have influenced a generation of education reformers and a whole segment of the homeschooling movement but are only now beginning to move into the mainstream. WRITTEN BY A TEACHER. KMBowns

Home Grown Kids: A Practical Handbook for Teaching Your Children at Home
Raymond and Dorothy Moore (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1981) (ISBN 0-8499-3007-3 [pbk.]). 253 pages; foreword by James Dobson, resource guide. First book on homeschooling I ever read, making clear that the original emphasis of the Moores was on delayed school entrance (an emphasis the Moores develope from the teaching of one of the founders of their religious denomination) rather than homeschooling as such. KMBowns

The Children on the Hill: One Family's Bold Experiment with a New Way of Learning and Growing
Michael Deakin (Indianapolis; New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972) (ISBN 0-672-51843-0). 125 pages. Account of a family (given a pseudonym in the book) in a Welsh town engaged since the mid 1960s in a very early experiment in homeschooling.

[Last revision 9 March 2013]

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This School Is Dead: Books on Homeschooling from 1970 to 1991 page is copyright © 2013 Karl M. Bunday, all rights reserved.

A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.
John Stuart Mill On Liberty (1859)
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